On Heroes and Hero Worship: Regimes of Emotional Investment in Mid-Victorian Popular Magazines

Abstract

Popular magazines played a major role in defining heroes and heroism during the mid-Victorian period. As a medium that involved readers and took a special interest in their social and cultural participation, mid-Victorian magazines created an ongoing conversation about the social meanings of the heroic. In these periodicals, readers’ emotional engagement was of central interest. Using William Reddy’s concept of “emotional regime,” I argue that popular magazines encouraged hero admiration, rather than worship, because it supported approved definitions of heroism.

Like other topics under debate during the mid-Victorian period, heroes and heroism played a prominent role in periodical discourse.¹ As will be seen below, the mid-Victorian years were not unconditionally affirmative of heroism but had a reserved attitude, at least toward certain kinds of heroes. It is not surprising, therefore, that scholarly opinion on Victorian heroism is divided. Echoing Thomas Carlyle’s famous claim in an 1840 lecture that “in these days Hero-worship, the thing I call Hero-worship, professes to have gone out, and finally ceased,” George Levine has claimed that “heroism in these good old days had about it a very modern quality of desperation.”² In Walter E. Houghton’s view, however, the heroic still thrived because it responded to “some of the deepest needs and problems of the age.”³ As Houghton elaborates, heroic figures offered ersatz belief and moral inspiration in times of religious doubt, guidance in an age of rapid transformation, and evidence of excellence to a society that seemed to cater to “mediocrity” and the masses.⁴ Responding to the needs and problems of the mid-Victorian years, heroes—and the debates around them—served a community-building function. They thus illustrate what Geoffrey Cubitt has stated more generally: that heroes are “products of the imaginative labour through which societies and groups define and articulate their values and assumptions, and through which individuals within those societies or groups establish their participation in larger social or cultural identities.”⁵

It is precisely the community-building function of the heroic that explains its prominence in British periodicals after 1850. Periodicals were designed to encourage readers’ social and cultural participation.⁶ As Margaret Beetham emphasises, “Each article, each periodical number, was and is part of a complex process in which writers, editors, publishers and readers engaged in trying to understand themselves and their society.”⁷ This is particularly obvious in mid-Victorian magazines that targeted—and reached—large readerships of the middle and educated working classes. Dickens’s preface to Household Words declared his intention to create a “comrade and friend of many thousands of people, of both sexes, and of all ages and conditions” and to “bring the greater and the lesser in degree, together.”⁸ The Leisure Hour’s first preface projected a similar vision of unity in social diversity: “Our sympathies are universal; and though they will adapt themselves to the special circumstances of different classes, they will vibrate, we trust, with true love towards all. And why should they not? Are we not one people, one great commonwealth?”⁹ Just as each preface declares an emotional relationship with readers, the other contents of both periodicals emphasize the emotional dimension of readers’ interest in heroes and heroism. This is quite in line with Cubitt’s claim that heroes are “endowed by others, not just with a high degree of fame and honour, but with a special allocation of imputed meaning and symbolic significance—that not only raises them above others in public esteem but makes them the object of some kind of collective emotional investment.”¹⁰ The following pages will discuss how this emotional investment was debated and regulated in a sample of mid-Victorian popular magazines. First of all, however, the question of their “popularity” needs to be addressed.

The term “popular periodical” is often employed without a clear definition.¹¹ Most obviously, periodicals can be considered popular when they are “calculated for the appreciation, not of a few, but of the many,” as E. S. Dallas wrote.¹² Delving further, we might assess popularity through a combination of factors: intended readership(s), circulation figures and publicity, price and appearance, tone and style, as well as the kind of social discourse that a periodical creates.¹³ The sample on which this article is based consists of six influential magazines available in the market between 1850 and 1880, whose discourse put particular emphasis on shared values and common cultural interests. These values and interests were determined by bourgeois standards of morality and taste even where intended readers were mainly sought among the working classes. The sample includes four weekly family papers that provided their readers (in different proportions) with instruction and entertainment: Chambers’s Journal, Household Words, All the Year Round, and the Leisure Hour. Since the emotional investment in heroes among children and the industrial classes was of special concern to middle-class editors, the sample also includes Samuel Beeton’s Boy’s Own Magazine, as well as the British Workman, whose first issue “solicit[ed] the support of both employers and employed, believing that the interests of both are firmly linked together, and that whatever injures one, affects the other.”¹⁴ These six periodicals were moderately priced¹⁵ and had considerable average circulations.¹⁶ Some were mainly oriented towards middle-class readers (All the Year Round¹⁷ and the Boy’s Own Magazine¹⁸) and others to working-class readers (Chambers’s Journal and the British Workman) but with permeability in either direction. As Lorna Huett points out, Household Words in 1850 was the “only publication to offer respectable, good-quality serialised fiction to a middle-class audience, at a low price,”¹⁹ but it also reflects Dickens’s wish “that his writings should be available for purchase to as many readers as possible.”²⁰ Ellegård notes that the editor of Chambers’s Journal “is said to have complained that the journal, originally designed for the education of the working classes, circulated among the masters rather than among the men.”²¹ Leisure Hour’s first “Word with Our Readers” specifically mentioned working-class readers, but the magazine had a large middle-class readership.²²

Each of the sampled magazines had a distinct identity in terms of its editorial politics, worldview, institutional background, and positioning of readers. A cross-periodical perspective reveals, however, how persistently they all engaged their readers in an ongoing conversation about the heroic. Heroes and their social meanings were scrutinised and debated, quite often in articles with an explicit heroic theme. Popular mid-Victorian magazines continually presented their readerships with varied repertoires of heroic figures (from national leaders to humble everyday heroes) that embodied key values and assumptions in their society. An increasingly egalitarian society could and did seek its heroes in many fields, not only in military service, exploration, colonisation, and the Christian mission abroad but also in science, engineering, philanthropy, and daily life. What seems to have been appreciated most in this array of heroes and heroisms was the display of “moral” heroism—expressed as an extraordinary sense of duty, endurance, perseverance, and selflessness. This form of heroism could be demonstrated in all walks of life, even among women, children, and working people. Because moral heroes inhabited the real world, they served as role models readers could relate to, thus performing a particularly important function both for individual self-improvement and the construction of collective identities.

The sampled magazines not only presented unique figurations of the heroic but also facilitated lively debate about the social meanings and uses of heroism. Even more significantly, with their close ties to readers’ lives, they were a medium particularly well-suited for shaping readers’ emotional responses to heroes. Emotions, what Rosenwein defines as “affective reactions of all sorts, intensities, and durations,” are an important element in community building, particularly when this process focuses on heroes and heroism.²³ My subsequent reading of heroism (based on a search for references to hero admiration and worship in the six aforementioned periodicals) relies on William Reddy’s notion of the “emotional regime.”²⁴ Reddy’s The Navigation of Feeling (2001) brings together evidence from cognitive psychology and anthropology to claim that emotions are, to a significant extent, socially learned and that societies have regimes for constructing and directing emotions through rules and constraints.²⁵ Emotional regimes “may vary across a vast range of possibilities,” but “this range is subject to two constraints: (1) Because emotions are closely associated with the dense networks of goals that give coherence to the self, the unity of a community—such as it may be—depends in part on its ability to provide a coherent set of prescriptions about emotions. (2) Because intentional shaping of emotions (insofar as they are cognitive habits) is possible, subject to the constraints of mental control, a community’s emotional order must take the form of ideals to strive toward and strategies to guide individual effort.”²⁶ Popular magazines reveal the emotional order of the mid-Victorian heroic imagination and point to the range of feelings that Victorians invested in their heroes. Individual magazines privileged specific kinds of heroes and heroics, but they were all concerned with the question whether heroes were to be worshiped or admired.

Mid-Victorian Magazines and the Navigation of Emotional Investment: Worship versus Admiration

Victorian popular magazines left no doubt that emotions were aroused by and bestowed upon heroes and that this was part of their cultural effectiveness. When the Leisure Hour looked back to “The Funeral of Lord Nelson” in November 1852, it presented the image of a nation united in mourning. It made frequent reference to the feelings this great hero aroused in life, when the “heart of every Englishman throbbed with emotion at the mention of his name.”²⁷ But it especially emphasized the emotions produced by his death: “As the coffin slowly emerges to the view of the vast and silent multitude, sobs and sounds of grief burst forth on every side, and the tribute of sorrows flows freely and unrestrained from eyes long unused to weep, but accustomed rather to flash with exultation at the mention of the prowess of him who is now borne to his rest.”²⁸ The Boy’s Own Magazine had a particularly high frequency of articles on heroes because its young male readers had a special fascination with heroism.²⁹ It proclaimed in 1863 that “there can be but few boys who have read any of the stirring stories of the enterprise and gallant deeds of British sailors […] without feeling the glow of a latent desire to emulate their glorious acts of bravery and heroism awakening within them, warming the heart with an ardent longing to encounter the ‘dangers of the seas,’ and share the laurels that may be gleaned from the boundless fields of the salt sea waves.”³⁰ In the same year, an article titled “Popular Heroes,” published in Chambers’s Journal, stated that Carlyle’s diagnosis of an “apparent dearth of reverence” for heroes might be “more in show than reality.”³¹ The most cheeky street boys, it claimed, still nourished a desire for heroes: “Deep in the heart that beats under the Arab’s fustian jacket is doubtless enshrined some ideal personage or other, the image of some one who, in Bill’s untutored fancy, forms the apex of humanity and the pink of perfection.”³² Even when they cited Carlyle, popular magazines tended to reassure readers that heroes were still culturally valuable and worthy of emotional engagement. At the same time, however, they made it clear that only certain kinds of heroes and heroics were commendable, thus guiding readers’ opinion in the approved direction.

The need to distinguish between true and false heroes and to respond to true heroism with the “right” emotions is a hallmark of heroic discourse in mid-Victorian popular periodicals. It is conspicuous that the article cited above was published in Chambers’s, a journal, after all, that was designed to encourage working-class readers’ self-improvement and to educate their tastes.³³ While striking a humorous tone, “Popular Heroes” is quite strict in its verdict that the public’s “vulgar” taste for heroes is indiscriminate. Readers need criteria for separating worthy from unworthy objects of veneration: “Undisciplined minds decree the laurel-wreath to much more dubious champions. Few, if any, of the really popular heroes of any century could go through even a mild cross-examination with the remotest chance of leaving the court ‘without a stain upon their character.’ Let us bring the telescope of inquiry to bear upon these vague stars, twinkling brazenly out of the firmament of history; let us try to discover whether the gems be genuine or sorry paste, the gold pure or a pitiful display of mosaic gilding.”³⁴ This concern for genuine heroes goes hand in hand with a concern over appropriate emotional responses. Since “undisciplined minds” were inclined to “vulgar hero-worship,” readers needed to be taught how to appreciate the right kind of heroes.³⁵ Popular magazines, and not just those addressed at working-class readers, provided this instruction by repeatedly demonstrating the kinds of emotions that were appropriate when encountering a case of real heroism.³⁶ They attempted to steer readers away from hero worship and toward admiration.

Indeed, based on evidence from the sample investigated for this article, what Houghton describes as the pervasiveness of “hero worship” in Victorian culture might be more accurately characterized as a pervasiveness of “admiration” for heroes and heroics. Popular periodicals (or at least the “respectable” amongst them) promoted a definition of heroism that was well-integrated into the social order rather than being disruptive or revolutionary. The preferred heroes of family papers, from Household Words to the Leisure Hour, were not Carlyle’s “natural elite of humanity” who were “to be worshipped and followed rather than to be emulated.”³⁷ Rather, they were aligned with the more liberal and egalitarian heroic concept preached by Samuel Smiles in Self-Help (1859).³⁸ Significantly, Smiles associated the word “worship” with an outmoded “Caesarism” that he rejected with vehemence as “human idolatry in its worst form—a worship of mere power, as degrading in its effects as the worship of mere wealth would be. A far healthier doctrine to inculcate among the nations would be that of Self-Help; and so soon as it is thoroughly understood and carried into action, Caesarism will be no more. The two principles are directly antagonistic.”³⁹ Smiles’s heroes rise “above the heads of the mass,” but they come from all ranks of society and can be emulated by anyone.⁴⁰ He writes, “Even the humblest person, who sets before his fellows an example of industry, sobriety, and upright honesty of purpose in life, has a present as well as a future influence upon the well-being of his country; for his life and character pass unconsciously into the lives of others, and propagate good example for all time to come.”⁴¹ Smiles’s heroes, like many of those depicted in mid-Victorian magazines, are exemplary heroes in Cubitt’s definition: “Exemplarity involves a perception not just of excellence, but also of relevance—and thus, in a sense, of similarity. Those whom we take as exemplars may be better than we are, but not than we might in principle become—not better in some absolute way that implies a difference of kind, but better relative to some common standard against which we hope to improve.”⁴² This explains why they should be admired rather than worshiped. While both worship and admiration are “positive emotions that are directed at an object other than the self” and hence are of great importance for the development of “personal and collective identities, values and goals,” worship implies a distance between the adorer and the adored that blocks the process of imitation.⁴³ Admiration, by contrast, stimulates imitation because it implies attainability.⁴⁴

Magazines directed at young readers and the working classes were particularly careful to caution against hero worship, especially the reverence of false heroes. Middle-class editors believed that these readers were in special need of guidance. In 1860, the British Workman, a paternalistic publication directed to the industrial classes, printed an article entitled “Who Is the True Hero?”⁴⁵ Readers were told in explicit terms that their enthusiasm for prize boxers was a misdirected form of appraisal: “A pugilist, who engages in the prize-fight may display great ‘pluck,’ and astonishing disregard of physical danger and suffering, he may excite wonder by his powers of endurance, and dogged determination to conquer, and those who are sufficiently inhuman to find pleasure in seeing two men try which can most successfully bruise and maim each other, may cry ‘bravo! bravo!’ and hold them up as heroes; But in what does their courage exceed that of the wild beast?”⁴⁶ This indictment is followed by commendation of a form of moral heroism that can be practiced by all members of society:

There are moral Heroes, men who for the sake of great moral principles and interests have braved reproach, ignominy, imprisonment, tortures, and death; and this not merely in reference to themselves, but to others also. In this class we must include the large number of worthies who in every age have suffered for conscience’-sake, and whose heroic bravery has been acquired, not by gymnastic training, but from the influence of Christian principles upon the heart. Nor has it been confined to one sex only, it has been nobly displayed by the delicate maiden, and by the aged matron, nay, even by the child of tender years.⁴⁷

It is perhaps no surprise that a publication like the British Workman, with its evangelical outlook and aim of reducing class conflict, favoured moral heroism and spoke out against violent displays of physical courage.⁴⁸ Similarly, Chambers’s article “Popular Heroes” distinguishes between laudable admiration for Robin Hood, the social rebel who helped the poor, and misguided enthusiasm for eighteenth-century highwaymen, whose rebellion against a corrupt system was no longer needed in a progressive society.⁴⁹ “Turpin and Sheppard,” the article concludes, “were sent back to their congenial mud, and have little claim at present to be regarded as popular heroes.”⁵⁰ Since the two criminals were a favourite of the penny dreadfuls, a respectable magazine addressed at the working-classes found it necessary to direct its readers away from cheap, sensational papers and their dubious heroisations. This was also a concern for the new quality boys’ periodicals that Samuel Beeton initiated since even middle-class boys were attracted by spectacular heroism.⁵¹ In 1869, the Boy’s Own Magazine cautioned its readers that their appreciation should not be directed to the “Rascally Jack Sheppard.”⁵² Instead, they should admire more worthy objects such as a young hero of the American Revolution, Kit Snyder.⁵³ An article about him in an 1857 issue climaxes in a sentimental scene between the dying “boy-patriot” and his mother that is calculated to stimulate readers’ tender emotions: “‘My boy, my boy! they have killed him,’ [his mother] cried; and kneeling on the snow beside him, she pressed him to her breast. ‘And has it come to this—and has it come to this—that they must stain the earth with children’s blood? He was my son—my child—my brave boy—my Kit—the only son of his mother, and she was a widow!’”⁵⁴ The ending venerates the boy’s heroic sacrifice and his brave attitude toward death. Readers are meant to admire his sacrifice despite its tragic outcome and to see the boy as a model of patriotic sentiment that contemporary British culture also esteemed. Nowhere, however, does the article suggest that worship would be an appropriate reaction to Kit Snyder’s sacrifice.

Indeed, all magazines under investigation here agreed with Carlyle’s diagnosis that hero worship was no longer the order of the day.⁵⁵ However, they met the demise of hero worship with celebration rather than nostalgic regret. The Leisure Hour, as a publication of the Religious Tract Society, had further reason to reject the worship of heroes—because good Christians should only adore God.⁵⁶ A note in the magazine’s “Varieties” section, published in 1860, argues that the veneration of other humans is a “sad misapplication of an inherent disposition of the mind, imparted for the most solemnly important of purposes.”⁵⁷ The article continues, “‘Man worships man,’ says Cowper: the tendency, either directly or in its effects, we find indicated in almost every page of the history of the species. We see it in every succeeding period, from its times of full development, when the men-gods of the Greek were worshipped by sacrifice and oblation, down to the times of the Shakespeare jubilee at Stratford-on-Avon, or the times of the Burns festival at Ayr. But the sentiment thus active, and expatiating in false directions, has a true direction in which to expatiate, and a worthy object on which to fix […] their God and King. Every other species of man-worship is a robbery of him.”⁵⁸ In light of such clear constraints, even the Leisure Hour’s obituary for the Duke of Wellington, an undisputed national hero, states explicitly that “we are not hero-worshippers ourselves” and that Wellington is, above all, “an instrument in the hand of God.”⁵⁹

While the collocation of hero and worship in Victorian popular magazines had negative overtones, the link between heroism and admiration was always positive. The Boy’s Own Magazine propagated admiration with particular emphasis because it wished to acquaint its young readers with role models during a formative period of their lives. In the general preface to the magazine, editor Samuel Beeton explicitly declares his intention to publish “Tales of Adventure, Stories of Heroism and Courage” that will “arouse feelings of ardent admiration for all that is good and noble.”⁶⁰ Its article on naval cadets cited above makes explicit reference to boys’ “latent desire to emulate” the British sailor’s “glorious acts of bravery and heroism.”⁶¹ In such instances, the Boy’s Own Magazine presents itself as less critical of military heroism than some magazines for adult readers. Of course, Victorian society venerated men who fought bravely at sea and on land. But it preferred a moral heroism that was not limited to social elites or special groups like the military and navy—a heroism that could permeate all parts of society. Articles about the heroic in popular magazines, and not just religious titles like the Leisure Hour, thus often emphasised that acts of civil heroism should be admired more than military heroism. For example, the hero of “A Simple Hero: A Reminiscence,” published in an 1876 issue of All the Year Round, is an orderly who nurses cholera patients in a regimental hospital on Malta and eventually succumbs to the disease himself. The article compares his bravery to the heroism of soldiers in the field: “And where all did their duty well and bravely, none was so fearless, none so untiring, so zealous for suffering comrades as my humble hero.”⁶²

The discourse created in the magazines and articles sampled for this study not only upheld civil and moral heroism but also used a wide range of strategies to encourage readers to ascribe to the same values. Since the literary language of poetry has a special emotional-aesthetic appeal due to its rhythm and rhyme, it was often used to emphasise the excellence of everyday heroism.⁶³ Poems stood out from the usual contents of periodicals, especially when their diction was lofty or archaic. Instead of emphasising the long-standing association between poetry, the military, and belligerent heroism, Victorian popular magazines often printed verse in praise of everyday heroism and heroes of humble origin.⁶⁴ Sometimes such pieces stood alone; in other instances, they were used to amplify the effect of prose articles and pictorial representations, adding an elevated note that was meant to strengthen the admiration already aroused by the magazine’s more prosaic contents.

Heroic Verse in Victorian Periodicals

The use of poetry to emphasise emotional highlights is conspicuous in the British Workman,⁶⁵ which found many of its true heroes in the working classes and sometimes portrayed them in strikingly realist illustrations.⁶⁶ In most cases, the poems were ballads that narrated heroic deeds in simple language but with an emphatic rhetoric of feeling. A typical example is a poem published in March 1873 describing the acts of Samuel Westlake, an engine driver who had recently prevented a crash with another train and saved many lives. In the defamiliarising language of verse, this simple working-class hero is depicted as a man who embodies chivalric ideals:

Gone is the age of knighthood,The palfrey and the squire;And he who would revive itBut overstrains his lyre.Yet there are real heroes,Their fellow-men to cheer,Without the shining corslet,Without the pointed spear.… … … … … … . … .Where Cornwall’s rocks are rising,Where Scotland’s mountains stand,By many a rolling river,In many a distant land,The true-born hero dwelleth,Who seeks his country’s weal,Not in the soldier’s glitter,Not in the warrior’s steel.⁶⁷

In this idealisation, Westlake comes to represent a new kind of modern hero who can be found all over the country, from as far west as Cornwall to as far north as Scotland. He is a national hero, despite his humble origin. As the final lines insist, he is decidedly not a military hero, yet his heroism has emotional resonance:

How thrills the heart to hear it!In vales where cowslips growThe Tale shall be repeatedAs autumns come and go;For oft of SAMUEL WESTLAKEBeside the hearth we’ll boast,Who is a greater heroThan if he slew a host.⁶⁸

As these lines suggest, a poem may outlast the ephemeral periodical in which it is printed. Its tribute to an exemplary hero will rise above its print context, becoming a timeless “Tale.”

Fires were a frequent hazard of urban life, and firemen were frequently venerated as exemplars of selfless civil and moral heroism. The September 1861 issue of the British Workman, for example, was dedicated to the brave deeds of James Braidwood, chief of the London fire department, who had died while performing his duty in the great fire at London Bridge in June of that year. Braidwood’s portrait and deed were depicted on the cover, followed by an obituary, “Braidwood, the Brave,” which was in turn followed by a poem “On the Death of Braidwood,” which identified him as “a hero true” (figure 1).⁶⁹

It is not surprising that Household Words included more sophisticated examples of heroic verse on firefighting given that its editor was Charles Dickens, a writer known for manipulating his readers’ emotions in fictional narratives. In its first year, Household Words published a ballad entitled “An Every-Day Hero” that depicts its humble hero and his deed with a more complex structure than the poems usually found in the British Workman. At first, this ballad presents the fireman hero as a common man who bears the common name of John. He works, quite unheroically, as a gardener but loses his occupation because of another man’s intrigue. John moves to London with his family, becomes a fireman, and in this role transforms into a hero who performs his duty as boldly as a warrior-hero of olden times:

Figure 1.

“Braidwood: The Great Fire at London Bridge,” British Workman, September 1861. Courtesy of the Working-Class Movement Library, Salford.

Clothed in his iron mail like an old warrior,He rushed on danger, his true heart his shield;Fear he had none whene’er his duty called.Oft clomb he to the roofs of burning houses;Sprang here and there, and bore off human creatures,Frantic with terror, or with terror dumb,Saving their lives at peril of his own.Such men as these are heroes!⁷⁰

In this passage, the rhythm captures the excitement of the fireman’s deed, and the high-register diction stresses its nobility. These strategies aim to engage readers’ emotional participation before they are assured of the fireman’s heroism in the last line. John’s unusual nobility comes to the fore when he saves the very man who once caused his downfall:

Quick as a thought o’er red-hot floors he leapt,Through what seemed gulfs of fire, on to the roofWhere stood the frantic man. The crowds belowLooked on and scarcely breathed.⁷¹

This passage is remarkable because the onlookers within the diegetic situation model the admiring gaze that readers are meant to adopt. The spectators literally and figuratively look up to the hero. Furthermore, the poem stages the spectators’ collective emotional investment, including their physiological response. The suspense created by this device increases when John returns to the fire in order to save the child which his former enemy has left behind. He tragically dies in the flames, thus performing the utmost heroic act. Again, the events are witnessed by the onlookers below, whose excitement is rendered in hasty exclamatory sentences: “Along the roof / Anon they saw him hurrying with the child. / The red flames met him, hemmed him round about! / Escape was not!”⁷² The spectators not only share a common point of view but also emotions and bodily sensations (loss of breath and speechlessness, sobs and moans). This unmistakably presents them as an emotional community:

    The crowd was hushedInto deep silence: it had but one heart,Had but one breath, intense anxietyFor that brave man who put again his lifeIn such dire jeopardy. None spoke,But many a prayer was breathed.… … … … … … … . … .The women sobbed and moanedDown in the crowd below; men gazed and trembled,And wild suggestions ran throughout the massOf how he might be saved.⁷³

The everyday hero transcends the masses who look up to him. He is above the crowd spatially and ethically because none of the empathising onlookers seems capable of performing the heroic deed. The elevated language further emphasises the difference between the hero and his admirers (both the readers of the poem and the crowd of spectators it describes). But this difference is one of degree; it does not imply an unbridgeable distance between hero and spectator that would encourage worship. John is similar enough to his fellow beings to arouse their admiration. His admirers might not be able to perform deeds of great bravery, but they can emulate some of the qualities that are manifest in his extraordinary actions.⁷⁴

The ballad’s frame narrative reinforces the idea that the modern world still has and still needs heroes as models. In the beginning, children ask their grandfather to tell them a heroic story because they are fond of such old-fashioned tales:

“Tell us,” the children to their grandsire said,“Some wondrous story! Tell us of the wars,Or one of those old ballads that you knowAbout the seven famous champions,St. George, St. Denis, and the rest of them,We have delight in those heroic stories,And often tell them over to ourselvesAnd wish that there were heroes now-a-days.”⁷⁵

The children here articulate a Carlylean regret that the heroic seems to have died out in modern life and that only ancient heroism remains. The temporal contrast is repeated and thus emphasised in the following lines:

        the children urgedMore eagerly their wish, athirst to knowSomething about the great men of old times,Deploring still that these degenerate daysProduced no heroes, and that now no poetsMade ballads that were worth the listening to.⁷⁶

The grandfather then tells the children the story of John the fireman, and the second half of the frame reveals the poem’s emotional climax—that John was actually the narrator’s son and the children’s father. Heroism has not only survived in the modern age but has ennobled the children’s own family. In the end, the ballad presents a lesson to the children in the poem and provides instruction to its readers as well, who learn that there still are heroes worthy of admiration in the modern world, just as there are still ballads about heroes that are worth listening to. “An Every-Day Hero” not only models appropriate emotional response through its carefully constructed textual performance but also embeds this lesson in a more general reflection on the status and function of the heroic in Victorian culture. Furthermore, the poem has a cross-class element that resonates with Dickens’s preface to Household Words. John is a man of humble but respectable origin whom all sexes, ages, and conditions can admire. But Household Words also offered verse about heroes of a higher class, perhaps reflecting Dickens’s desire to attract a middle-class readership. In another issue published in 1850, the magazine printed a dramatic scene in blank verse, Richard Henry Horne’s “Arctic Heroes: A Fragment of Naval History,” that responded to the outpouring of public interest and sympathy following the loss of Sir John Franklin and his expedition. The two characters in the verse drama—both experienced naval officers—are condemned to wait for help or, more likely, death. One is close to giving up, but his comrade—modelled on Franklin—points out that they must maintain the ideals of their caste until the end:

        We, to the last,With firmness, order, and considerate care,Will act as though our death-beds were at home,Grey heads with honour sinking to the tomb;So future times shall record bear that we,Imprisoned in these frozen horrors, heldOur sense of duty, both to man and God.⁷⁷

With a strong emotional gesture towards posterity that recalls the famous Crispin Crispian speech from Shakespeare’s Henry V, the scene affirms the values of endurance, perseverance, and dignity in adversity. Although the characters in the verse drama are not everyday heroes, their attitudes and behaviours are meant to be admired and to inspire emulation.

The analysis in this article was by necessity restricted to a limited sample of mid-Victorian popular magazines that mediated middle-class values. While these magazines had distinct discursive profiles, they all point to the special role that periodicals—as a participatory and serial medium—played in creating an ongoing conversation about the heroic in their time. These magazines share an emphasis on constructing a preferred regime of emotions. With different inflections, they display a bias towards a Smilesian, rather than a Carlylian, definition of heroism, favouring heroes who stood for a moral excellence that all members in Victorian society could strive to attain. They created a widespread conviction that this was the “right” kind of hero and that admiration was the “right” form of response because it encouraged imitation. The importance of popular magazines for the Victorian heroic imagination thus goes far beyond issues of representation. With their specific audiences, formats, and modes of address, these magazines provided a medium through which the Victorian public could be actively engaged in negotiating what it meant to be heroic in the modern age.